02446cam a22002897 4500001000700000003000500007005001700012008004100029100002400070245014300094260006600237490004200303500001800345520126000363530006101623538007201684538003601756690005601792690005601848700001801904700001901922700002101941710004201962830007702004856003802081856003702119w15649NBER20170817233330.0170817s2010 mau||||fs|||| 000 0 eng d1 aPhilipson, Tomas J.10aTerminal Care and The Value of Life Near Its Endh[electronic resource] /cTomas J. Philipson, Gary Becker, Dana Goldman, Kevin M. Murphy. aCambridge, Mass.bNational Bureau of Economic Researchc2010.1 aNBER working paper seriesvno. w15649 aJanuary 2010.3 aMedical care at the end of life, estimated to contribute up to a quarter of US health care spending, often encounters skepticism from payers and policy makers who question its high cost and often minimal health benefits. However, though many observers have claimed that such spending is often irrational and wasteful, little explicit analysis exists on the incentives that determine end of life health care spending. This paper attempts to provide the first rational and systematic analysis of the incentives behind end of life care. The main argument we make is that existing theoretical and empirical analysis of the value of life do not apply, and often under-values, the value of life near its end and terminal care. We argue that several factors drive up the value of life near its end including the low opportunity cost of medical spending near ones death, the value of hope including living into new innovations, and the potential positive effect of on the value of life from being frail. We calibrate the ex-post value of hope associated with treatments for HIV patients to be as much as four times as high as standard per-capita estimates of treatment effects and as many as two and a half times as high as aggregate values across all cohorts. aHardcopy version available to institutional subscribers. aSystem requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files. aMode of access: World Wide Web. 7aH0 - General2Journal of Economic Literature class. 7aI0 - General2Journal of Economic Literature class.1 aBecker, Gary.1 aGoldman, Dana.1 aMurphy, Kevin M.2 aNational Bureau of Economic Research. 0aWorking Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)vno. w15649.4 uhttp://www.nber.org/papers/w1564941uhttp://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w15649